Witcher 3 - Designed As Standalone Game

July 18th, 2014, 19:28

Gamerant's Andrew Dyce is back again with another article for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, and talks about the game being designed as a "Standalone Game’ For New Players".

Speaking with CD Projekt Red studio head Adam Badowski at E3 2014, he explained that The Witcher 2 didn’t just bring the studio more attention, but lessons as well. Those will have a serious impact on the structure of The Witcher 3‘s campaign, meaning that although the game is closing a trilogy, it won’t be throwing players into the deep end from the start:

“The Witcher 2 starts… maybe it’s too intense? The very first part of [The Witcher 3] is very slow-paced, you don’t need to know the characters. We provide some details about Witchers, about the crucial elements of who ‘The Witcher’ is, what is the meaning of monster-hunting, and then some small portions of the storyline… of course you can expect some epic moments, but you need time to be sucked into the story.”

We previously explained how Game Director Konrad Tomaszkiewicz feels that Geralt of Rivia is as well-established as Batman at this point, making it possible for each game to truly stand as a separate chapter. Despite promising “an epic ending” to the trilogy with Wild Hunt , the developers claim that not only will the game be playable for newcomers, but may be the entry in the series best designed to welcome in the unfamiliar:

“It’s true, actually, we are sure of that. We want newcomers to the series, that’s why we made it in a way that it’s a standalone game. So all newcomers can enjoy this game right from the beginning. Even more, I think it may be be the best game to start with. We want people to enter the game, and we made it quite smooth. There’s no wall of…’pure-blood-ish’ RPGs straight at the beginning.”

“We’ll see in the end how you judge it, but I’m expecting that people will enjoy being a real Witcher, and they will be able to do whatever they want, because this is role-playing. On the other hand, they will know what they want to do because that’s important as well. We don’t want to just throw people somewhere into a huge war.”